When Did Southern Segregation Begin?

When did southern segregation begin? People often assume that segregation was a natural outcome of Reconstruction. In fact, scholars cannot agree on which events at the end of the nineteenth century mark the beginning of formalized Jim Crow. The 6 selections in this volume address the question of segregation’s origins and, amid the debate over when segregation began, also engage the issues of where, why, and how it became the norm for relations between black and white southerners. Concentrating on various issues—segregation’s antebellum antecedents, degrees of fluidity of racial interaction following emancipation, the complex relationship between race, gender, and class, and the diversity of segregation practices among the states—the selections illustrate the evolution of southern segregation from a diverse array of local practices to an inflexible American Apartheid.

• American Horizons: U.S. History in a Global Context, Volume II: Since 1865
• The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 (American History)
• A Gathering of Old Men
• Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy (Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History)
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
• Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography of Growing Up Poor and Black in the Rural South
• The Souls of Black Folk
• The Folly of Jim Crow: Rethinking the Segregated South (Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures, published for the University of Texas at Arlington by Texas A&M University Press)
• Infidel
• The God Delusion